On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that federal agents had surrounded an Ohio landscaping and gardening business on Tuesday morning, swarming the facility to round up as many undocumented workers as possible.
Both locations of the business, Corso’s Flower and Garden Center, in Sandusky and Castalia, were raided. Altogether, 114 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants were taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. Many who were rounded up reportedly had children in daycare facilities or with babysitters, which raises the question of where those children will go in the coming days and weeks.
True conservatives should abhor the actions of ICE and fear for the well-being of the children who are left, for an indefinite amount of time, without parents.
Many right-wingers claim ICE is just doing its job, making our country more safe, and enforcing the law when people ill-advisedly try to break it. Social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt have pointed out that conservatives tend to value moral foundations like loyalty and respect for authority to a greater degree than their liberal counterparts — it only makes sense, then, that conservatives would feel a certain disdain for those who subvert the law in order to get ahead, especially when there are people who have chosen to go through the onerous process of immigrating legally. These underlying values of loyalty and respect for authority are not inherently wrong or bad, as some liberals might claim.
But conservatives are falling prey to tribalist ways of thinking about immigrants, and they’re allowing themselves to be swayed by stereotypes and poor reporting (that illegal immigrants commit disproportionate numbers of violent crimes, for example, when numerous reports dispel such myths).
Instead, we should remember that our protectionist instincts, to look out for American jobs and American workers alone, aren’t aligned with true free market values — which tell us to let employers decide who is most fit for a job, and allows the market to decide what wages are paid based on the value that is created, not arbitrary wage and price controls. Plus, given the latest jobs report, protectionist policies are simply not necessary at this time: The U.S. currently has 6.7 million job openings for 6.3 million workers seeking employment. In other words, we’re doing wonderfully economically, and immigrants (legal and illegal) don’t take away jobs, but are willing to perform jobs that we have a shortage of workers for (or jobs that American workers don’t want). When you have a surplus of jobs, protectionist policies don’t make a ton of sense.
Economic arguments for being more lax on illegal immigration aside, there’s also a human dignity component that conservatives, especially Christian conservatives, should not neglect. We’ve long argued that children do best when they’re raised in a stable home with two married, committed parents. When illegal workers are rounded up, held in detention facilities, and deported, they’re separated from their children (and sometimes their spouses as well). The lives of both immigrant and child are uprooted. Imagine the effect the Ohio raid might have on a 7-year-old who’s just recently started school, made progress at learning English, and is far too young to know what’s going on. ICE raids like this one separate families, leaving children with no place to go, without actually making America safer or our industries more productive.
Conservatives’ emphasis on law and order, authority and loyalty, and the value of family are not moral beliefs to be stomped all over by liberals who refuse to see the good. But conservatives should push one another to not fall into tribalist or simplistic ways of thinking — when illegal immigrants come into our country, authority is being subverted. But conservative anger at that value being threatened comes into direct conflict with other conservative values: namely, our emphasis on family, and our fervent belief that the free market should enable the most number of people to achieve economic mobility. It’s time to rethink the narrative that illegal immigration solely threatens the fabric of our nation, and consider the degree to which ICE raids also threaten our values.
True conservatives should consider letting significantly more people in via legal immigration pathways, and expanding work visa programs so more people can escape economically ruined countries (like socialist Venezuela) and bring their families here. Doing so won’t significantly threaten American jobs or lives — except perhaps the jobs of ICE agents.
Liz Wolfe (@lizzywol) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is managing editor at Young Voices.
